Tuesday, May 13, 2014

The rivalry between the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets took a left turn down the long intestine Tuesday when Philly manager Ryne Sandberg told reporters why he’s been feeling ill. His team recently played a three-game series at Citi Field in New York, which also is home to a Shake Shack stand in the outfield. If you’re a fan of the food there — mmm, Black & White shake — don’t read this:

Matt Gelb: Ryne Sandberg got food poisoning from a Shake Shack burger. Lost six pounds in two days. My entire world is shaken.

“Food poisoning” is a serious charge, Ryno. Legalities and such. But “six pounds” also sounds like a tough deal. Imagine the local reaction if some out-of-town manager said he got sick from a bad cheese steak he ate at Citizens Bank Park in Philly. ... Well, there probably would be applause. Never mind.

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Left unanswered is the question of whether he was a) sliding into first and his pants began to burst; b) sliding into two, and his pants were filled with goo; c) sliding into third, and he felt a greasy turd; or d) sliding into home, and his pants were filled with foam. It's sad what passes for investigative journalism these days.

I had the worst food poisoning I ever had in my entire life this year while on a job interview. Flew in the night before, stayed at the property and had dinner there. Knew the food wasn't good and probably wasn't right but ate it anyway. Around 5 in the morning I woke up with both explosive diarrhea and explosive vomiting. Absolutely destroyed the hotel bathroom for the next 4 hours. Cleaned myself up and went and did the interview over the next 2.5 hours. Got done and went back to my room and continued to explode out of every orifice on my body for the next two hours. That was also the weekend I got attacked in the face by a gull as well. Goes down as the worst trip and job interview I've ever been part of.

I had the worst food poisoning I ever had in my entire life this year while on a job interview. Flew in the night before, stayed at the property and had dinner there. Knew the food wasn't good and probably wasn't right but ate it anyway. Around 5 in the morning I woke up with both explosive diarrhea and explosive vomiting. Absolutely destroyed the hotel bathroom for the next 4 hours. Cleaned myself up and went and did the interview over the next 2.5 hours. Got done and went back to my room and continued to explode out of every orifice on my body for the next two hours. That was also the weekend I got attacked in the face by a gull as well. Goes down as the worst trip and job interview I've ever been part of.

I have only gotten food poisoning once. My company had a pizza party for some reason I forget now. We got pizza from a rather new place who gave us a great deal on 20 pizzas or so. I woke up early Saturday morning with the symptoms that McCoy described above. All Saturday was spent in the bathroom. Sunday was only slightly better. Monday went to work a little embarrassed as to how I spent my weekend. Nobody wanted to admit to anything, but eventually the story made the rounds that the entire company was violently sick over the weekend. Our company contacted some government agency and a report was filed with the Center for Disease Control Agency. I think the pizza company was eventually fined something like $100 but it was a small price to pay for making around 50 people so sick that they thought they were going to die.

I have never had food poisoning, and I've eaten more crap off more carts in more cities and countries than most of the population. I think I have some kind of genetic immunity or simply am unreasonably lucky.

The only medication I've ever had - yet - was from a dermatologist for some minor skin thing.

uh, sometimes after taking it - there were issues. lunchtime at work, 'if not for that private bathroom there would be trouble' issues. all on the north side of the body, but still - no thanks. No need to relive college frat party mystery shot glass bathroom experience in the midst of my co-workers.

The doc told me, oh, yeah, there's a similar drug that doesn't produce any of those symptoms.

I have never had food poisoning, and I've eaten more crap off more carts in more cities and countries than most of the population. I think I have some kind of genetic immunity or simply am unreasonably lucky.

I like odd food and raw things, so I've had my share of food poisonings over the years. Worst experience was a trip to my now in-laws. I was planning to ask them for permission to propose to their daughter. Bought some raw milk cheese from a local farm. Got salmonella. Have never been so sick in my life. Shat the guest bed, absolutely destroyed their toilet with puke and ####, and ultimately had to ask permission to marry their daughter in between heaves while clutching their toilet for dear life. I've never seen someone laugh so hard as her mother at that moment.

On the plus side, I'm married now and salmonella is very responsive to antibiotics.

I have never had food poisoning, and I've eaten more crap off more carts in more cities and countries than most of the population. I think I have some kind of genetic immunity or simply am unreasonably lucky.

Oh boy, I've a friend that used to work concessions at Comerica...the things they do with those hotdogs.
I'm incredibly anti "ooh so gross" food stuff, but ball park hot dogs are a carnival of unsanitary practices.

Eh, sure. I've heard this for years, but that's true of more than ballpark hot dogs.

Got food poisoning one time. When I was a kid, the family (Mom, Dad, 2 sisters and me) took a trip to Texas. Ate at a little Mexican joint in San Antonio on the river walk. The next day, all 5 of us were violently ill, in a hotel room with 1 bathroom, on Easter Sunday.

I had the worst food poisoning I ever had in my entire life this year while on a job interview. Flew in the night before, stayed at the property and had dinner there. Knew the food wasn't good and probably wasn't right but ate it anyway. Around 5 in the morning I woke up with both explosive diarrhea and explosive vomiting. Absolutely destroyed the hotel bathroom for the next 4 hours. Cleaned myself up and went and did the interview over the next 2.5 hours. Got done and went back to my room and continued to explode out of every orifice on my body for the next two hours. That was also the weekend I got attacked in the face by a gull as well. Goes down as the worst trip and job interview I've ever been part of.

In the current economy, some companies go to great lengths to make the interview process more rigorous.

I am pretty adventurous with food, but thankfully have only had food poisoning once. One Friday, I took Amtrak from Penn Station to visit my girlfriend for her birthday in Boston, where she was in grad school. Picked up a sandwich at one of the cafes in Penn Station before the train ride. When I got there, she was still at the library so I grabbed a burger at Wendy's while waiting.

Later, I woke up in the middle of the night and immediately ran to the bathroom to throw up. For the next three days, I was unable to keep down any food or drink, and I felt like I was freezing the entire time. Saturday night was her birthday party at a local pub -- I actually brought a chair into the bathroom and sat under the hand dryer to try to warm up, to no avail. The next day, we got into a huge fight (unrelated to the food poisoning, but it didn't help my reaction) that lasted for months and almost led to our breaking up. Thankfully we didn't, and seven years later we are happily married. But wow, what a terrible weekend. And I've never eaten at Wendy's since.

I have never had food poisoning, and I've eaten more crap off more carts in more cities and countries than most of the population. I think I have some kind of genetic immunity or simply am unreasonably lucky.

Yeah, I'm somewhat the same. I had a touch of Montezuma's revenge in Mexico, but that was compounded by too much Mezcal and a minibus ride through the hilliest and curviest road I've ever been on, between Oaxaca and the beach, on which multiple passengers had to vomit. Funny enough just last night I found a reference to the same illness-inducing road in this book.

I got the sickest I've ever been a day or two after a camel trek that I took in Northwest India, near the Pakistan border. We were in some tiny tiny tiny village of goat herders and a gregarious beautiful Rajasthani woman - all of the other women in the village tried to hide their faces from us - offered our group some sort of goat yogurt beverage. That ... may have been an error. But the illness was more flu-like than Dehli belly, so it may have been unrelated.

I have a semi-wonky stomach and have had food poisoning a few times. It's horrible. What I find somewhat amazing after the fact is the taste aversion, which apparently is one of our very strongest survival mechanisms for all the obvious evolutionary reasons.

Worst I ever had - I was staying at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, and on a Saturday AM I went down and had the breakfast buffet. About 4 hours later, I started to feel a little nauseated, and then it was like the log flume at Six Flags. I was sick for the next 36 hours, became so dehydrated that I was hallucinating flashing lights while lying in bed, and then almost passed out at the airport when waiting for my flight home. I weighed myself when I got home, and I was down almost 15 pounds.

When I was 11 or 12 my family went to LA. We made the mistake, obvious in retrospect, of eating at a place called McIndia. We also stayed at a rathole hotel, with questionable plumbing. That was among the worst experiences I have ever underwent, McIndia was certainly in violation of the Geneva conventions and I think it was a Hindu Nationalist bioweapons testing front for chemical weapons bound for Kashmir.

I've always found it truly impressive in a very weird way when I'm firing out of both ends, so to speak. On those rare, awful occasions my body just does not want anything to do with anything in the alimentary canal and it's quite good at evacuating everything inside the 30+ feet of my digestive system.

I have never had the awfulness described above. But after a gig when I was in my early 20's my bandmates and I went out to get a burger at a local joint. Well, their ranch dressing left a little to be desired, and on the drive home I threw up out the window a few times...

Port-en-Bessin-Houppain, Normandy. Moules-frites, and I got une moule mal. About an hour after the meal my stomach started to make these ... noises. Noises that sounded like every gurgle and growl I had ever experienced in my life to that point, but all happening at once, in a kind of symphony of retching notes, a heavily atonal symphony that would have delighted Schoenberg.

Then the actual retching and diarrhea started. Chunks and chunks and chunks. I think I lost every meal from the previous three weeks in the next 12 hours. Was unable to move for another 24 after that. Had to miss the visit to Omaha Beach.

When I was three or four years old, I mixed sour pickles with cream cheese and almost immediately regretted it. (Not surprisingly, my mother regretted it way more.) Never again have I consciously mixed pickles with cheese. (Thankfully, I was at home on the one time I did it unknowingly.)

Duda was hospitalized Friday afternoon and later blamed an undercooked hamburger. He confirmed Tuesday at Yankee Stadium that the burger also came from Shake Shack.

But a Mets spokesman insisted the hamburger Duda cited came from another Shake Shack location besides Citi Field.

Duda missed Friday night's game against the Phillies but was able to return to the Mets' lineup Saturday and has played every game since then.

A Mets official said the team is investigating the matter.

"The first we heard of this situation was about an hour ago via Twitter," said Greg Waters, senior manager for marketing and communications with Shake Shack. "We're attempting to get in touch with Ryne Sandberg to learn more. At this point we have no further knowledge of the situation, and there have been no other related reports whatsoever. Food safety is of paramount importance to us, and we're connecting with our management team at the Citi Field Shake Shack now to discuss further and find out more."

Have had food poisoning twice, once from eating macaroni salad from some little fleabag store with a "deli" in the back in Hamilton City, CA, the other after binging at an all-you-can-eat sushi place near the Strip in Las Vegas. At least with the macaroni salad, I was able to be sick at home. The folks on the cross-country flight to Orlndo got to experience the aftermath of the sushi with me.

With some of the other poor choices I've made over the years, I'm very surprised it's been only twice.

#14 Many years ago there was a popular local restaurant that put something like a dozen people in the hospital with the Eggs Benedict.

Because it was well established and had a loyal clientele they survived this. And within a year put roughly two dozen in the hospital with their Eggs Benedict. For some reason they were out of business shortly after that.

Three years ago La Dernière and I were in Germany in the middle of a truly lethal outbreak of foodborne disease: fifty people died. Initial reports traced the outbreak to Spanish cucumbers, so we avoided eating cucumbers, not that hard to do. At one point in our trip we were standing outside a restaurant in Lübeck, waiting for it to open, and it started raining and we thought the heck with this, let's just get some sausage and bread at a grocery and snack in the hotel. Come to find, after we returned to the US, that the restaurant we had found and then avoided by whim was a major source of the food poisoning, and it wasn't due to cucumbers at all but to various herbs and sprouts. I feel like we're living on borrowed time.

Easily. It is a close call but the seagull in the face may be the highlight thus far. But McIndia is pushing hard for the top...

Mine is less exciting--from seafood in Florida--but did involve my brother chalking--literally--each trip of mine to the bathroom on the wall of the hotel where we were staying and yelling out at a particularly vivid moment, "That's number 21! It's a new record!"

The only other time I got really sick from food was way back in the 5th grade. We had some old pumpkin pie laying around and I ate the last piece. The next morning while I was at school I started to get a major headache and get real nauseous. Complained to the teacher who acted all shocked that I was capable of getting a headache. She just assumed I only gave them. Anyway, she sends me to the nurse's office where I kind of hang out for 15 minutes or so until she sends me back to class. After getting back to class I kind of sit in a daze at my desk for 15 minutes or so until I realize I'm getting really sick. So I get up from my desk and go to the blackboard where the teacher, Ms. Williams, is working with a few kids. I try to tell her that I don't feel good but all that comes out of my mouth is copious amounts of vomit. Fortunately-or unfortunately in the mind of a 5th grade deviant-my puke misses everybody. Afterwards I felt about a million times better and didn't feel sick at all but still got to miss a couple of days of school. So that was probably the best food borne illness I ever got.

Honestly I can't really see the place actually being called McIndia. That is a derogatory name for cheap low end Indian fast food. Plus I don't even know if McDonalds would allow a business to be called that.

About 15 years ago, when my old band was on tour in the southeast, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel somewhere in rural North Carolina. Our diet had been largely of the Wendy's/McDonald's variety for a few weeks, so I decided to get something lighter: salmon. In retrospect, salmon at a Cracker Barrel was a glaringly obvious mistake, but hey, I was young and naive. We got back in the van, and about half an hour down the road, it became clear that I was going to defecate posthaste, regardless of whether or not I was in the vicinity of a toilet. In the woods of North Carolina, it can be a long ways between highway exits. Fortunately, I (barely) held on until we found an exit, which happened to have a BP station. I befouled that bathroom enough to drive the price of BP stock down an eighth.

And no, McDonald's would never allow for a McIndia unless Indian trademark law is lax enough that they can't do anything about it.

Once for me. I ate clams and chips at a food court at lunch, then hit the shitter at 3:30. As soon as I got out I went home, but literally had to open the door and puke out of my truck onto the street on the way home. The next 8 hours were spent alternating from the bathroom to my bedroom in the fetal position.

I bought pre-fab spaghetti and a bottle of red wine at a Fred Meyer, took it home, and ate it. Later that light, I woke up feeling really full and gross, and soon it became clear that I was going to eject this stuff one way or another. I was living in a little studio apartment in Portland, and the distance from my bed to the bathroom was probably six steps. Didn't make it. Began to barf just outside the bathroom, and ultimately ended up pointed into the bathroom rather than the toilet. Wave upon wave of deep burgundy vomit, laced through with noodles and chunks of meatballs, filled that tub to a depth of maybe four inches.

I just couldn't face the cleanup. I lived alone and I was just a couple of miles from my parents' house, so I went there to have my mother take care of me. For the next three days I couldn't keep anything down, including water. I lay on the couch in my parents' living room feeling sorry for myself, having forgotten about the bathtub full of vomit. When I was finally feeling better I went back over there, and opened the bathroom to find that the vomit had developed a fairly substantial green film all over the top of it, and the whole bathroom reeked of rotting puke. I threw up twice more while cleaning it. It was the worst.

I bought pre-fab spaghetti and a bottle of red wine at a Fred Meyer, took it home, and ate it. Later that light, I woke up feeling really full and gross, and soon it became clear that I was going to eject this stuff one way or another.

I once got food poisoning from a wingstop. Me and a couple friends were having a contest to see who could eat the most 3 mile island wings in 10 minutes. About halfway through I hit a few wings that were cold in the middle and plowed through for the sake of my pride, big mistake.

Incidentally, this was the night I found out I have vasovagal syncope, so while on the toilet I passed out and hit my head on the doorframe to my bathroom, luckily, I was using my roommates bathroom because a large colony of ants had come up the pipes in mine, so he found me, bare naked, with both kinds of mess all over, and blood coming out of my head. Fortunately, the IV fluids I got at the hospital did wonders for my stomach though, although I imagine the EMTs who came and got me rethought their life choices.

When I was three or four years old, I mixed sour pickles with cream cheese and almost immediately regretted it. (Not surprisingly, my mother regretted it way more.) Never again have I consciously mixed pickles with cheese. (Thankfully, I was at home on the one time I did it unknowingly.)

If you'd ever seen the working conditions in some of those pickle factories on Maryland's Eastern Shore, you'd never eat another pickle again, I guarantee you, with or without the cheese.

A chef friend of mine broke open a wheel of Parmigiano-Reggiano and found a hair in it. The hair had been there for the 2 years that the cheese requires to age. Later he was in Italy and toured one of the dairies where the cheese is made. All of the men making the cheese wore hairnets, but their hairy Italian forearms were uncovered.

I was a preteen at the time, so I could be mis-remembering. But it was a place at Venice Beach with a lot of other shady food spots adjoining it. IIRC it wasn't even an eat in place.

One thing I was told by both parents when I was older is is that our motel also doubled as a place for ladies of the night to bring their johns. AAA did not do us any favors on that part of the trip. At least when we finally drove all the way up to Seqooia that was nice, except my younger brother whined a ton and so when a hornet got into the car and stung him half a dozen times we thought he was just complaining again.

Ah, family vacations with children, such great memories. I can't wait to create more with my own!

It's the haggis that's the problem for me, not the vindaloo (which is delicious). I've gotten fairly adventurous over the last several years, but can't bring myself to eat the rubbery organs (i.e. not heart or liver).

This isn't a food poisoning story, but really more a stomach bug story..

Years ago, my buddies and I went to Vegas for New Years. Buddy and his now estranged wife went home on the 1st. My other buddy and I stayed until the 2nd and we planned on being stupid on the 1st. My tummy starting hurting like heck that night. I was up all freaking night spewing stuff from both ends. Despite my best efforts (I even got extra towels) our bathroom was ####### warzone. It was awful. My biggest fear was getting home (we live in So Cal, so we had a 3+ hour drive). Pepto was my good friend for the ride home. I thought it was food poisoning until my buddy called me a couple of days later and said "that mess you left in the bathroom made me sick!"

Really, the bathroom was awful. If the La Quinta in Vegas had banned me at the time, I wouldn't have been surprised.

I once got food poisoning* from tomato bisque. Felt weird/bad a few hours later, went to sleep early, woke up with abdominal/GI pain, tried to hurry to the bathroom but lost my equilibrium on the way and (essentially) fell into a head-long, head-first run into a bureau. (Bang!) GF wakes up, disoriented, turns on the light and sees me motionless on the floor with red, chunky liquid rushing out of my mouth ... she momentarily thought I'd be shot.

I've gotten fairly adventurous over the last several years, but can't bring myself to eat the rubbery organs (i.e. not heart or liver).

Haggis is much better than the sum of it's parts. It's minced, and not at all rubbery. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's great, but it's certainly edible and I enjoyed it enough to have it as part of a Scottish breakfast more than once.

I do most of my work in southeast asia, and am generally a very adventurous eater. I have had two awful experiences, and they were both after doing something that seemed harmless.

Once was in Myanmar. I was taking a group of about 50 execs from Yangon to Naypyitaw (this is before they had flights) and the only option was a 5-6 hour bus ride. There was one rest stop, and one rest stop only, half way through. I ate lunch at a fairly well regarded Yangon restaurant, and was so stricken about an hour and half into the ride that I had to stop the bus, squat down next to it and just #### my brains out. Later, we were holding a briefing and discussion at the halfway stop and I had to pause every few minutes in my talk to go into the bathroom and vomit.

The other was in Brunei. There is not much to do in Brunei, and I was looking forward to leaving. I had booked a somewhat convoluted return home- I would leave Brunei early in the morning, fly to Kotah Kinabalu in Malaysia where I would spend the day on the beach, hop back on a flight to Kuala Lumpur, and from there go to Bangkok where I'd spend the night before coming home. I went out to a quiet dinner, and came home around 8:30 feeling pretty energetic as I'd had no alcohol since that is illegal in Brunei, so I decided I'd go the gym. I started working out and felt nauseuous, but put it down to bad hydration and went to bed.

Around 3 am I woke up and puked my guts out. I figured that must be the end of it, and went to bed. Woke up around 5:30 to get on my flight to KK, felt ok until halfway through and then just started going through barf bags like there was no tomorrow. Luckily, on the same flight were three big oil lobbyists I knew, who took pity on me and checked me into a day room in their fancy hotel and made sure I didn't die.

The room was easily the nicest hotel room I've ever been in my life, with a gargantuan balcony overlooking the bay, and all I did in it was barf. By about 3 pm I was feeling like I should try my flight, flew to KL, vomited unctrollably there until I managed to keep down some kind of chocolate bar with cornflakes in it, navigated my connection, flew to bangkok, and vomited on more time before going to bed there.

Final tally: vomited in 4 cities in three countries in the space of about 18 hours.

I count myself very fortunate that I cannot compete with the many lurid & enchanting tales of hotel hurling, international digestive distress, and avian aggravated assault. And I hope to be able to keep it that way for many years to come.

Sounds like you got the norovirus which generally is a foodborne illness.

A lot of these "exploding from both ends" that last for more than 24 hours are probably Norovirus.

I had that once and I think that's the closest I've felt to dying in my life.
I don't understand how the body keeps contracting in an attempt to expel something when there is obviously nothing in there (not even water) to expel.
And yet, it did, for about 36 hours straight. I needed another two days for the sore stomach muscles to heal so I could sit upright without extreme pain.
I was positive I tore a muscle in my stomach with all the violent dry heaving.
And the stuff that came out the other end? Jimminy crickets, I swear that a marble that I swallowed when I was 4 must have come out during that time, it was cleaning out so much of what was in there.

The worst part was not being able to rest properly because of the pain, and the fact that when I closed my eyes I would experience horrific nonsensical hallucinations/thoughts.

I'm a pretty slender person, so losing 18 pounds was quite noticeable on my frame when I finally went into work.

I have an irrational fear of choking on vomit (don't want to end up like the drummer in Spinal Tap, y'know); as a result, I avoid throwing up as much as humanly possible. I would rather lay on a bathroom floor in misery for hours than simply get it over with and feel better in 30 seconds. I'm not a drinker and my diet is fairly bland, so I've thrown up maybe a dozen times in my 49 years.

But two years ago on the day before the Super Bowl...ohhhh, it was bad. Worse: it was only 36 hours before my house was going to full of people for my annual SB party. I went to First Care and was so dehydrated, they stuck an IV in my arm, which proceeded to freak out my wife. But I recovered, and the Giants won. (I have no idea what the moral of the story is.)

I'm a pretty slender person, so losing 18 pounds was quite noticeable on my frame when I finally went into work.

When I was 24ish I got infected sinuses for the first time in my life. I had a raging fever and it completely destroyed. It got so bad that I finally went to the hospital and the nurse that was attending me could smell my infection before she even entered my cubbie or whatever you call it. At the time I weighed 165 to 170ish healthy and on that day I weighed something like 142 pounds. After the doctor's visit I flew into Chicago for my sister's wedding. A couple of months later my family sent me the pictures from all the various events that were held that weekend and in them I looked like a freakin skeleton. I immediately understood why everybody was so concerned about me and I looked like a South Park Ethiopian sans the pigment color.

"I'm not a drinker and my diet is fairly bland, so I've thrown up maybe a dozen times in my 49 years."

Is that a low number for non-drinkers?

If you're counting your childhood, I'd say probably, yeah. I remember throwing up as a kid pretty much every time I got sick, so maybe 3 times a year. As an adult I've probably only puked 3 or 4 times total, so once every 5 years or so.

One of the times I did puke as an adult was about a dozen years ago when my ex-wife and I volunteered to help with a search party for a missing girl. They bought a few dozen boxes of pizza for the volunteers that they had sitting on the sign up table outside. We were part of the early evening shift, so by the time we ate, the pizza had been sitting in the hot June sun for probably close to 6 hours and who knows how many grubby hands had picked through it. It didn't taste good, but we were starving and it was free, so we figured what the hell. We both spent that night and most the following day puking and crapping our guts out.

That's what we get for attempting volunteer work. The moral, as always - never help anyone.

Obama and Vice President Biden took four employees from a reconstruction project in Washington out to lunch at Shake Shack on Friday afternoon. The White House said the lunch -- a burger and fries for Obama; cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake for Biden -- comes after a week where they hit the road to highlight the need to increase investment in America's infrastructure.